Broken
by Y St. Ace
Summary: KotOR: Alternate EndingDSF. Killing someone makes them a martyr in the mind. Better to break them and remake them  or use them as a reminder...


Dance of a Broken Man

_Inspired by Elizabeth I (with one line stolen). You love a queen at your own risk._

He dances back and forth between sanity and madness. Some days he spends rocking back and forth, flinching at every muted scream, wishing he could tear the ears off his own head. Some days he laughs and laughs and laughs because it - the fall of the Republic, the fall of his son - it was all so _funny_. Some days he weeps, for himself and for the ashes of love.

Some days he brushes against lucidity and those are the days that Revan will come. He has not seen her face or heard her speak since the day he lay frozen on the plascrete of the Star Forge. Now Revan cloaks herself in black and Bastila serves as her voice.

Once, very early on, he had tried to escape. He had made it beyond the security wing and into the barracks before he was recaptured. The Sith guards who had failed in their duties were tortured to death in front of him. As Revan had shocked the guards into unconsciousness, only to heal them sufficiently so that she could do it again, Bastila had spoken to the Sith apprentices in the room. "Knowing that his actions will cause the deaths of his enemies, will he attempt to escape again?"

They watched him carefully, gauging his reaction to the display in front of him. He put on what non-chalance he could, but it did not stop his hands from shaking. A few hours later, the apprentices left, reflecting on the lesson. The corpses remained for a week but his room had reeked of cooked, decayed flesh and burnt hair for much longer.

Longer still were the repeating echoes of the screams in his head. There was a period of shadows after that, and he did not know how long it had taken him to crawl out of darkness. But he had.

Once he had spoken to the slave who had brought him food, asking her name. She had stuttered and ran away, dropping his food. The next day, Revan had killed her in front of him. She could have killed the woman in one blow, but she did not. The thick sound of flesh connecting with flesh was punctuated with sharp cracks as the slave's bones shattered slowly. Revan had broken the woman's jaw within the first ten minutes. He thought it was a mercy being free from the screams, but the mangled, murmured sounds she had made were worse.

When it was over, Bastila addressed the apprentices. "Knowing that any ties he makes, however tenuous they are, will be severed by death, will he attempt to make another one?"

The apprentices regarded him silently, but he did not see them. He was remembering something; an article he'd read or a lecture he'd seen or a lesson he'd had. In it, a physicist had disproven the theory of alternate universes. Carth was hating that professor while the apprentices were filing out. He was hating that professor for hours, then days, then weeks. He lost track of the time, but eventually he could hate no more. When he remembered himself and his surroundings, he found that he was much thinner and that his beard was a few inches long.

Once he had refused to answer Bastila's questions at all, expecting to be tortured into speaking. He knew what he was doing. He was hoping that something would go wrong, that he would be killed during the questioning and that all of this would end forever and ever.

Instead, the Sith Lord and her apprentice had left and returned the next day with the apprentices - and his son.

Bastila then put him in stasis. The Force stayed the pleas and curses in his mouth and kept his eyes frozen on the tableau unfolding in front of him.

"Kneel before your Lord," Bastila ordered.

There was a fierce ecstasy on Dustil's face as he obeyed. Carth had to watch as Revan slowly, with much care and tenderness, wrapped her gloved fingers around his son's neck and squeezed. He screamed silently behind the energy cage, watching as his son's face turned red, then purple, watched as Dustil submitted rapturously his killer. He watched as his son's eyes bulged and then fixed.

At the last second, she stopped. As his son fell to the ground, gasping, so did his stasis end and he had fallen to the floor of his cage. While his son had gasped and choked on the floor, so he had choked on his helplessness and on the fact of what his son had become.

The apprentices had waited obediently, silently, while Dustil had recovered. When he could, Dustil had pushed himself to his knees. Revan had extended her hand and his son had gratefully taken it, kissing her black glove.

Bastila asked the apprentices, "Knowing that his son will offer himself to be tortured when his father does not speak, will the prisoner continue being obstinate?"

There were no answers. Bastila waved them out of the room, then turned to him then and asked him if he would like to answer her questions now. He told her he would do anything. He did not beg for death. He realized it would be wasted breath.

These are all the memories he recounts. He is aware today which means he will be visited. He does not know when but he knows. His stomach knots in anticipation.

He flinches at the sound of the doors opening. It is Bastila and Revan. The younger woman looks as if she is going to follow Revan into the room and her voice carries to him.

"Why did you keep him alive? He can do nothing _for _you. He can do nothing _to_ you," Bastila hisses. "Why do you continue this farce?"

The voice that comes out of the mask is synthesized, devoid of humanity. "Leave."

Bastila bows immediately. "My Lord."

He is alone. He is lucid enough to know that death is preferable to this. He does not care about the consequences anymore. He cannot fight her and win. He can only do as he pleases and expect no mercy.

He speaks. "You didn't answer her question."

He is surprised when he gets a response. "The question was not hers to ask."

He is laughing now and struggles to his feet, an awkward task when his arms are bound tight in a strait jacket. "Fine. Fine. I can play. Why do you keep me alive, Revan? Why didn't you kill me on the Star Forge like you should have?"

She is silent and his desperate words rush out. "You cut down Jolee, Juhani, Zaalbar and Mission without a second thought. You crushed the Republic in hours. But you didn't do it to me! Why?"

That is more talking than he's done in months and just standing before her has weakened him. He slumps back onto the floor and asks the question he has asked himself everyday. "Why haven't you killed me yet?"

He looks up when he hears the sound of her mask unlatching. She pulls back her hood and reveals herself to him. She is not as he remembered her. The eyes are Cathar yellow and her skin looks as if it is carved of granite, all harsh grey lines.

"You are an example." Her voice is the same and he chuckles at the painful memories that are flooding what's left of his mind. "You are to remind me of how close I came to danger."

He chuckles again, feeling sanity slip away. This has to be madness. Only a madman would believe he saw grief in her eyes or heard pity in her voice. This monster that has usurped her body, that now looks so frail, was not capable of anything other than cruelty. She had shown him that. Hadn't she?

"Danger? You were the most powerful Jedi in the galaxy. You proved time and again that there was nothing and no one who could lay a finger on you."

"Enough," she barks. And maybe he recognizes that tone? She is impatient, but maybe uncertain?

The laughter cracks in his throat as she forces new understanding into his mind.

_He sees their meeting on the Star Forge. From her eyes, he sees himself begging her to return to the Jedi, offering his love like it is some kind of prize. As if anything he could offer would ever match the power she would have as the Lord of the Sith. _

_This pitiful one, he begs. She is irritated, angry, and - _

_There is a single second of it, so fleeting that he almost does not feel it. But it is sharp, it is true, and it can only be one thing. _

_It is regret._

_Then the cacophony of darkness envelops her again and she orders Bastila to strike._

That scene fades away. Again, it is her and him and this room somewhere in the darkness where she controls the galaxy.

His mind's violation is not what causes him to choke on his words. "I was that close?"

Revan does not answer. She puts on her mask and walks away, leaving him to his fractures, to his lost hope.

He never sees her again.


End file.
